Nkrumah, Ghana, and Africa

Nkrumah has been described by author Peter Omari as a dictator who
"made much of elections, when he was aware that they were not
really free but rigged in his favor." According to Omari, the CPP
administration of Ghana was one that manipulated the constitutional and
electoral processes of democracy to justify Nkrumah's agenda. The extent
to which the government would pursue that agenda constitutionally was
demonstrated early in the administration's life when it succeeded in
passing the Deportation Act of 1957, the same year that ethnic,
religious, and regional parties were banned. The Deportation Act
empowered the governor general and, therefore, subsequent heads of
state, to expel persons whose presence in the country was deemed not in
the interest of the public good. Although the act was to be applied only
to non-Ghanaians, several people to whom it was later applied claimed to
be citizens.

The Preventive Detention Act, passed in 1958, gave power to the prime
minister to detain certain persons for up to five years without trial.
Amended in 1959 and again in 1962, the act was seen by opponents of the
CPP government as a flagrant restriction of individual freedom and human
rights. Once it had been granted these legal powers, the CPP
administration managed to silence its opponents. Dr. J.B. Danquah, a
leading member of the UGCC, was detained until he died in prison in
1965. Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia, leader of the opposition United Party (UP),
formed by the NLM and other parties in response to Nkrumah's outlawing
of so-called separatist parties in 1957, went into exile in London to
escape detention, while other members still in the country joined the
ruling party.

On July 1, 1960, Ghana became a republic, and Nkrumah won the
presidential election that year. Shortly thereafter, Nkrumah was
proclaimed president for life, and the CPP became the sole party of the
state. Using the powers granted him by the party and the constitution,
Nkrumah by 1961 had detained an estimated 400 to 2,000 of his opponents.
Nkrumah's critics pointed to the rigid hold of the CPP over the nation's
political system and to numerous cases of human rights abuses. Others,
however, defended Nkrumah's agenda and policies.

Nkrumah discussed his political views in his numerous writings,
especially in Africa Must Unite (1963) and in NeoColonialism
(1965). These writings show the impact of his stay in Britain in
the mid-1940s. The Pan-Africanist movement, which had held one of its
annual conferences, attended by Nkrumah, at Manchester in 1945, was
influenced by socialist ideologies. The movement sought unity among
people of African descent and also improvement in the lives of workers
who, it was alleged, had been exploited by capitalist enterprises in
Africa. Western countries with colonial histories were identified as the
exploiters. According to the socialists, "oppressed" people
ought to identify with the socialist countries and organizations that
best represented their interests; however, all the dominant world powers
in the immediate post-1945 period, except the Soviet Union and the
United States, had colonial ties with Africa. Nkrumah asserted that even
the United States, which had never colonized any part of Africa, was in
an advantageous position to exploit independent Africa unless preventive
efforts were taken.

According to Nkrumah, his government, which represented the first
black African nation to win independence, had an important role to play
in the struggle against capitalist interests on the continent. As he put
it, "the independence of Ghana would be meaningless unless it was
tied to the total liberation of Africa." It was important, then, he
said, for Ghanaians to "seek first the political kingdom."
Economic benefits associated with independence were to be enjoyed later,
proponents of Nkrumah's position argued. But Nkrumah needed strategies
to pursue his goals.

On the domestic front, Nkrumah believed that rapid modernization of
industries and communications was necessary and that it could be
achieved if the workforce were completely Africanized and educated. Even
more important, however, Nkrumah believed that this domestic goal could
be achieved faster if it were not hindered by reactionary
politicians--elites in the opposition parties and traditional
chiefs--who might compromise with Western imperialists. From such an
ideological position, Nkrumah supporters justified the Deportation Act
of 1957, the Detention Acts of 1958, 1959 and 1962, parliamentary
intimidation of CPP opponents, the appointment of Nkrumah as president
for life, the recognition of his party as the sole political
organization of the state, the creation of the Young Pioneer Movement
for the ideological education of the nation's youth, and the party's
control of the civil service. Government expenditure on road building
projects, mass education of adults and children, and health services, as
well as the construction of the Akosombo Dam, were all important if
Ghana were to play its leading role in Africa's liberation from colonial
and neo-colonial domination.

On the continental level, Nkrumah sought to unite Africa so that it
could defend its international economic interests and stand up against
the political pressures from East and West that were a result of the
Cold War. His dream for Africa was a continuation of the Pan-Africanist
dream as expressed at the Manchester conference. The initial strategy
was to encourage revolutionary political movements in Africa, beginning
with a Ghana, Guinea, and Mali union, that would serve as the
psychological and political impetus for the formation of a United States
of Africa. Thus, when Nkrumah was criticized for paying little attention
to Ghana or for wasting national resources in supporting external
programs, he reversed the argument and accused his opponents of being
short-sighted.

But the heavy financial burdens created by Nkrumah's development
policies and Pan-African adventures created new sources of opposition.
With the presentation in July l961 of the country's first austerity
budget, Ghana's workers and farmers became aware of and critical of the
cost to them of Nkrumah's programs. Their reaction set the model for the
protests over taxes and benefits that were to dominate Ghanaian
political crises for the next thirty years.

CPP backbenchers and UP representatives in the National Assembly
sharply criticized the government's demand for increased taxes and,
particularly, for a forced savings program. Urban workers began a
protest strike, the most serious of a number of public outcries against
government measures during 1961. Nkrumah's public demands for an end to
corruption in the government and the party further undermined popular
faith in the national government. A drop in the price paid to cocoa
farmers by the government marketing board aroused resentment among a
segment of the population that had always been Nkrumah's major opponent.